Spellbinder (4 page)

“Oh, look,” said the girl, “tennis. I used to love tennis. That was how I died, actually.”

“How can you die from playing tennis?”

“I’d just won,” explained the girl cheerfully. “I nearly always won, you know. And I jumped over the net. My foot caught and I went right down onto the court—
smack!
”

Belladonna’s eyes widened.

“My head cracked open. It was the most appalling mess, but quite instant. I just had time to think, ‘Oh, bother!’ and I was dead.”

She smiled pleasantly, as if she’d just recalled a family picnic.

“That’s awful!” whispered Belladonna.

“I suppose,” admitted the girl, “but more awful for everyone else, really. I mean, I was pretty much past caring. My opponent, Sally Jenkins it was, went on to the next round of the tournament, which really wasn’t right, because I
had
won, you know.”

“I would’ve thought they’d cancel the whole thing,” said Belladonna.

“Yes, I must say I was a bit surprised. My parents were royally ticked off, I can tell you. But there you go, no use crying over spilt milk . . . or brains.”

She grinned mischievously and began to slowly fade away. Then her face changed, as if she saw something or felt something that she hadn’t expected.

“Oh, really!” she complained. “This is too much!”

An almost invisible hand reached out and grabbed Belladonna’s wrist.

“You’ve got to do something. This is all wrong!”

And she was gone. Belladonna stared for a moment
at the empty space where the tennis girl had been, and then wandered over and sat down outside the Office.

Steve looked up from his comic. “You were talking to yourself,” he stated flatly.

“No, I wasn’t.”

The green “Enter” light buzzed on, and there was a click as the door unlocked. Belladonna leapt to her feet. Steve folded up the comic, stuffed it into his back pocket, and slouched through the door after her.

Miss Parker was austere and angular—one of those people who seem to have been born old. She was incredibly skinny and always wore navy-blue suits that seemed to have been made for a much heavier person. Belladonna imagined that her wardrobe at home was crammed with identical navy-blue suits and two pairs of black shoes. Miss Parker was the sort of person who thought black was “close enough” to navy blue, and she was certainly not the sort of person who would spend more than fifteen minutes looking for new shoes of any color. She seemed to spend quite a bit of time on her hair, however. It was always perfectly coiffed and curled around her ears in an arc of pepper and salt, ending in two sharp points just on her jawline. She wore gold half-moon glasses, which added to the general air of disapproval as she peered over the tops of them to look at her charges.

Belladonna walked from the door toward Miss Parker’s dark mahogany desk across what felt like miles of dingy rose-pink carpet with such a deep pile
that she felt she was about to sink right through it and into some netherworld where pupils endured perpetual detention in dark classrooms supervised by grim teachers with no sense of humor and an abiding dislike of children.

She joined Steve in front of the desk and examined the office with interest. It was much brighter than she’d expected, with gleaming white walls, certificates cataloging Miss Parker’s achievements, photographs of past school events, and a large print of a Picasso painting. But pride of place went to an old wooden lacrosse stick that was mounted on a polished board along with a brass plaque that Belladonna couldn’t quite read, though she imagined it was a memento of some long-gone tournament played in the days when Miss Parker herself had been a student. Two huge sash windows dominated the far wall of the office, between which there was a tall, narrow bookcase with an arched top like a church window. Belladonna tried to look out of the windows, but all she could see from where she was standing were the decaying facades of the buildings on the other side of the street. She turned her attention back to the Picasso print. It was of a crying woman and was all angles and planes, with a handkerchief that seemed more like a weapon than a comfort. She looked from that to the angular Miss Parker, and thought she could see why it might appeal to her.

She glanced at Steve, but he was examining the
carpet intently. After a few moments, he shifted his weight, shoved his hands into his pockets, and then quickly pulled them out again.

Miss Parker sniffed and put her bony elbows on the vast shiny desk, resting her chin on her clasped hands. “Mr. Evans,” she drawled, “here we are again. I thought you told me you were going to stay out of my office for the rest of this term.”

Steve didn’t respond. Miss Parker turned her probing gaze toward Belladonna.

Belladonna thought of gorgons, creatures that could turn people to stone simply by looking at them.

“And Miss Johnson, what on earth are you doing here?”

Belladonna wasn’t sure if she was supposed to answer or not, but she was generally of the opinion that getting the whole proceeding over with as quickly as possible would be the best thing.

“We . . . accidentally made some stuff. And it exploded,” she explained. “But it was an accident.”

Miss Parker looked at her for a moment with the same kind of expression she would probably have adopted if her cat had suddenly started reciting Shakespeare.

“An accident,” she turned to Steve. “Was it an accident, Stephen?”

Steve glanced at Belladonna like a drowning man spotting a distant life raft.

“Absolutely,” he said, a little too loudly. “We were
supposed to be making this stuff, but then we accidentally made this other stuff. And then Mr. Morris walked in it while it was drying next to the radiator.”

Miss Parker nodded. “While it was drying?”

“Yes, Miss,” said Steve, optimistic of a quick escape.

“That doesn’t really sound like an accident, does it? Mr. Morris told me that as it dried, he began to experience an unsettling sensation around his feet.”

“Yes, Miss,” Steve burbled on. “But it was only because he had hobnailed boots on. They kept making little sparks, y’see, and setting it off.”

“Setting it off?”

“Bangs.” Steve was losing momentum as he seemed to realize this was probably not going to help his case. “Small . . . um . . . bangs.”

Miss Parker’s pale green eyes stared at Steve over her glasses and he seemed to shrivel up in front of the desk. Belladonna couldn’t bear to watch.

“But it isn’t our fault he got it on his shoes,” she blurted, thinking fast. “We couldn’t clean it off the dish, you see. And we thought that if it dried, then it would be easier to clean. We’d just been messing with different things; we didn’t know that when it dried it would become explosive. And we put it right up next to the radiator, but Mr. Morris tripped over Jane Fletcher’s bag and sort of stumbled into it. It wasn’t like we did it on purpose or anything.”

Miss Parker looked at Belladonna. The explanation had the ring of plausibility to it.

“Hmph,” she grunted. “I must admit, Mr. Morris does have a reputation for a certain amount of clumsiness.”

Steve glanced at Belladonna—the sun was breaking through the clouds.

“And as you have never been sent here before, Miss Johnson, I am inclined to believe you . . . this time.”

She stood up slowly.

“However, in future, any chemistry experimentation should be limited to the work assigned. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Miss,” they both hissed eagerly.

“Well.” Miss Parker waved a bony hand. “Off you go, then.”

Steve shot out of the Office as if he’d been fired from a gun. Belladonna followed him, but stopped at the door.

“Miss Parker . . .”

The headmistress seemed surprised. “Yes?”

“Has anyone ever died on our tennis courts?”

Miss Parker removed her glasses and stared at Belladonna. “Died?” she said. “On the tennis courts? What an extraordinary question. Of course not.”

Belladonna looked at her for a moment. She was lying. Miss Parker was lying. Unless, of course, the girl was the one making things up. But then why would she do that when she was already dead? Belladonna smiled weakly at Miss Parker, backed out of the room, and closed the door.

Steve was waiting just outside, positively gleeful.

“That was brilliant!” he gushed. “You’re a natural! I can’t believe you haven’t been in trouble before.”

“Considering how often you’re in trouble, I would’ve expected you to put up a better show,” said Belladonna, walking away.

“There’s not usually any point,” explained Steve. “I reckon it’s better to just fess up, take whatever they’re dishing out, and get on with things. Explanations usually just extend the agony.”

“Oh, well,” said Belladonna sarcastically, “at least you’ve thought about it.”

They walked down the stairs and along the empty corridors. Belladonna suddenly stopped. The tennis girl was at the end of the hall waiting for her. She looked worried and, as Belladonna watched, seemed to see something unpleasant to her left. Then she vanished again.

“Steve . . .”

“What?”

“Have you ever heard of anyone dying on the tennis courts?”

“Here?”

“Yes, here.”

“When?”

Belladonna thought about the tennis girl’s dress.

“I’m not sure. Early 1900s, maybe.”

“Early 1900s?” he repeated, crestfallen. “How would I know? I thought you’d dug up some dirt on old Parker.”

Belladonna rolled her eyes. The bell sounded for lunch and hordes of students poured out into the corridor.

Steve shoved his hands into his pockets and started to slouch toward the door to the lunch room. Belladonna knew where he was going—the chess club always met at noon in a corner of the lunch room, hunched over their games in silence except for the occasional
whap
! as they hit the small stop-clocks that timed their moves. Yesterday Steve had caused chaos by producing a matchbox and releasing a large hairy spider across their boards. It was amazing how many of them turned out to be terrified of spiders; though it was always possible that, as they never seemed to go outside, they’d never seen one. In which case, thought Belladonna, it served them right.

She was sure Steve had something equally effective planned for today, but to her surprise, he turned back.

“I know where we might be able to find out.”

He spun around and marched away from the lunch room and back into the oldest of the school buildings. Belladonna followed as they made their way back past the hot drinks machine and the notice board full of paper signs telling the students to do this, and not to do that, and cataloging the dismal season-to-date record of the football team. Steve marched up the broad stairs that Belladonna knew led to the science labs (scene of
former glories only that day), but he didn’t stop there. Without pausing for breath, he was up again, to the top floor. This was where the sixth-form common rooms were, and the smallest, dingiest classroom in the whole school, where Watson struggled in vain to instill an interest in history to cramped ranks of bored faces.

Steve marched past the common rooms and to a tall, narrow door next to the classroom. He turned the handle. It was locked.

“Oh, great,” said Belladonna, gasping a bit after all the stairs.

Steve grabbed the handle again and heaved the old door up as he turned. There was a click and it swung open, revealing a steep, narrow staircase. He turned to Belladonna with a grin. “It’s a knack,” he said.

“You’re going to end up in jail,” said Belladonna grimly, hoping he couldn’t tell that she was quite impressed.

She stepped through the door and started up the stairs. Steve followed, shutting the door behind them and plunging the narrow stairwell into darkness. Belladonna hesitated for a moment, then noticed a dim gray light at the top, straining against the blackness. She started up the creaky stairs, hoping that this whole thing wasn’t going to turn out to be one of Steve’s famous practical jokes.

As they climbed the stairs, the sounds of the school receded and a heavy silence seemed to descend, broken
only by footsteps and creaks. Belladonna reached the top and stepped into the dim gray light of a long, narrow attic.

“This is amazing!”

The eaves of the building met in a cobwebby gloom above their heads, old ribbons and pieces of newspaper dangled from the rafters, and a few faded photos stared earnestly from the walls. At each end was a dusty circular window letting in a flimsy, filtered light. The old floorboards were dirty and marked with the remains of over a hundred years of spiders and their winged victims. Belladonna crept through the dangling, dusty webs to where a series of boards were stacked against the wall. She flipped them over. They were old posters promoting coffee mornings, tea parties, choir festivals, and Christmas concerts. All held at a time before her grandmother was even thought of.

“That’s not it,” whispered Steve, as if anyone could hear them this far up.

He beckoned her over to the far side, where two large trunks lay side by side. She flung open one of the lids while Steve tried to clean the window with the sleeve of his jumper in an effort to get a bit more light into the room. The trunk was full of clothes, the things that people wore back in the days when they changed for lunch and tea and dinner. The colors were muted, but the contrasts strong—pale coffee shades matched with dark chocolate, sky blue, and purple. The colors that people chose when they didn’t care what others
thought, when they set fashions and didn’t follow them.

Belladonna held them up, wanting to mock them as tasteless, but secretly longing for the confidence to stalk the halls in yellow and black.

“Not that one,” Steve turned around. “The other one. It’s full of papers.”

Belladonna closed the lid of the clothes trunk and heaved the lid of the second one open. A hinge gave out with a crack and the lid fell against the wall with a resounding bang.

They froze. Listening.

Nothing. They were too far away for anyone to hear.

The box was full of the sort of bits of paper that people put aside but never really look at again. Programs, dance cards, reports, essays, articles from the local newspaper about dances, charity balls, and teas. There were a few letters and invitations, all dated from the early 1900s through the late 1920s. Belladonna read them and wished that she’d lived then. Perhaps if she had, she’d know what to do and say; she’d know how to dance and what to wear. She gazed at a newspaper photograph of the girls (it had been a girls’ school then) who had held a charity ball for the soldiers in South Africa. Their faces seemed so grown-up and confident. Not like her at all.